Epic Theatre Ensemble Announces 9th Anniversary Season Of New Works

New York's OBIE Award-winning Epic Theatre Ensemble (Zak Berkman, Melissa Friedman, Ron Russell, Founding Executive Directors) has announced its 9 th Anniversary Season of new works: the world premiere of Mahida's Extra Key To Heaven by Russell Davis, and the New York Premiere of Passion Play by Sarah Ruhl. Also scheduled is Shakespeare Remix MacBeth a collaboration with Epic's unrivaled After School Shakespeare Program at Chelsea High School.

In announcing the 2009-2010 season, founding executive director Zak Berkman stated,"It's a season that embodies everything great about our city: diverse, multi-generational, political, and poetic. And it's a season that embraces every aspect of our company's mission. For eight years, Epic Artists have premiered socially-minded plays Off-Broadway, adapted classics with students in the NYC public schools, and placed theatrical events at the center of community activities. As a result, our artists have created a unique human bridge between our classrooms, their neighborhoods, and the New York Stage that stretches all five boroughs.

So it's very fitting that in this undeniably ambitious 9 th Season all the bridges come together in Brooklyn with Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play thriving at thecenter of a Spring Festival of collaborations, performances, events, and celebrations reminiscent of the historic Passions but with a 21 st Century twist."The season commences with the world premiere of Mahida's Extra Key To Heavenby Russell Davis, directed by Will Pomerantz. The cast will feature Tony Award-winniner Michele Pawk, Roxanna Hope, Arian Moayed, and James Wallert. Performances begin September 16, 2009 and will continue through October 11, 2009 at Signature Theatre's Peter Norton Space (555 West 42nd Street). Opening night is set for Saturday evening, September 26, 2009.Mahida's Extra Key To Heaven is a poetic and haunting love story about crossinghuman and political borders in this time of unyielding violence. It begins when a young American painter visiting his mother on an island in the Northwest encounters afrightened Iranian college student abandoned by her brother and waiting alone for a ferry that will never come. It ends in a way that is horrific, beautiful, and unforgettable. Tickets are now on sale for Mahida's Extra Key To Heaven by visiting the website at www.epictheatreensemble.org or by calling 866-811-4111.

Epic Theatre Ensemble's nationally acclaimed REMIX Series returns with Shakespeare Remix Macbeth, a collision of Shakespeare's classic play about ambition, mysticism, and war colliding with new writing by students from NYC's Chelsea High School.Directed by Epic co-founder, Melissa Friedman (Hannah and Martin, A More Perfect Union), performances are slated for Winter 2010.From Broadway to Brooklyn! In Spring 2010, Epic Theatre Ensemble will present the New York premiere of Passion Play by Sarah Ruhl (In The Next Room (or thevibrator play)) at the Irondale Center, a converted Sunday School inside the LafayetteAvenue Presbyterian Church in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Passion Play is a wildly imaginative, adventurous, and moving exploration of the timeless intersection of religion, art, and politics.

Inspired by the historic festivals where everyday citizens came togetherto elevate their communities by staging the life and death of Christ, Passion Play transports audiences first to 16th-century England, where Queen Elizabeth threatens to shut down a small town's production; then to Nazi Germany, where Adolf Hitler's arrival at the famous Oberammergau Passion Play influences the lives of its cast; andfinally to Spearfish, South Dakota in 1984, as a local production becomes a campaign stopfor a famous actor-turned-President running for re-election. MarK Wing-Davey willreturn as director following his highly acclaimed productions of Passion Play at the Goodman Theatre and Yale Repertory Theatre, but will be re-envisioning the play for this site-specific production.

Russell Davis (Playwright, Mahida's Extra Key To Heaven) Plays include Appointment with a High Wire Lady, The Last Good Moment of Lily Baker, The Second Death of Priscilla, The Song of Grendelyn, and Sally's Gone, She Left HerName. They have been produced at various theatres throughout the country, includingPeople's Light & Theatre, Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, Long Wharf Theatre, CenterStage, Yale Repertory, and Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival. These playshave also been presented at the Mark Taper Forum's New Work Festival, The Sundance Institute Playwrights Lab, O'Neill Center's National Playwrights Conference, Playpenn, the National New Play Network's Showcase of New Plays ('05), and the New Harmony Project where he was a writer-in-residence in 2001. The Last Good Moment of Lily Baker won aDrama-Logue Critics Award in California for best play in 1987. His new play, Cecilia's Last Tea Party, was produced at Passage Theatre Company and at Todd Mountain Theater Project in 2008. He was commissioned by People's Light & Theatre to adapt Avi's Crispin: The Cross of Lead (Newbery Medal for children's literature, 2003). Crispin was produced at People's Light in early 2008. In 2008-9 People's Light produced his The Day of the Picnic as part of the biennial Philadelphia New Play Festival. He is currently a 2008-10 recipient of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. He was resident playwright at People's Light for the Theatre Residency Program of the National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group ('99-'01). He is a past member of New Dramatists in New York Davis has also performed as a juggler and unicyclist for The Road Company's Flying Lemon Cirque, for The Instant City Circus at Pittsburgh's City Theatre Company, and in People's Light's production of his new vaudeville piece for all ages, The Thoughts &Travels of Nicki. He directed Tony Duncan who won the juggling championships at the 1994 International Jugglers' Association Convention, and worked with the juggler Michael Moschen in Michael Moschen in Motion at the Brooklyn Academy Of Music's 1988 Next Wave Festival and at the Lincoln Center's SERIOUS FUN! Festival 1990. He has been a juggling/unicycling instructor for the S.T.E.P. summer program for New Haven inner city youth, for the Big Apple Circus' Circus Arts in Education program, and at HB Studio inNY. He has been working in collaboration with Paul Meshejian, director, and with Jon Held, a juggler and former member of Airjazz, to develop Jon Held's solo performance piece Tales of Lunacy. This piece was presented at the Southern Theatre during the 3Legged Race New Theater 2002 Conference in Minneapolis and subsequently produced byTouchstone Theatre.

Will Pomerantz (Director, Mahida's Extra Key To Heaven) is Associate Director forArtistic Development for Epic Theatre Ensemble where he directed the New Yorkpremiere of Howard Barker's A Hard Heart (starring Kathleen Chalfant). Will has directed and developed new plays with such theatres as Playwrights Horizons, The PublicTheatre, Hartford Stage, New York Theater Workshop, Ensemble Studio Theater, SohoRep, Culture Project, The Signature Theatre, The Williamstown Theatre Festival, TheStudio Theatre, The Mark Taper Forum and The Pittsburgh Public. He has directed worldpremieres by such playwrights as John Guare, David Auburn, Neil LaBute, Craig Lucas,David Lindsay-Abaire, Stephen Belber, Noah Haidle, Linda Cho, Kira Obolensky andCarey Perloff . In addition to his work on new plays, Will has also directed texts byChekhov, Ibsen, Strindberg, Shakespeare, Shaw and Sophocles. His production of The Shape of Things was voted Outstanding Production of the year in Washington, DC by Metro Weekly and received a Helen Hayes Award for outstanding performance, as well as being cited as among the year's best by The Washington Post and The Washington Times. His production, Dai received a Drama Desk nomination for Best Solo Performance 2006-2007 and Lucille Lortel Award for Best Solo Performance. He received an OOBR Awardfor Outstanding Production (for A Tale of Two Cities) and his work has been citedmultiple times as Critic's Pick (TimeOutNY) and Voice Choice (The Village Voice). Will Pomerantz is the first American director ever invited to direct for the NationalTheatre of Poland, and his production of Cinders by Janusz Glowacki performed as part ofthe repertory for 4 years. In addition, Will has been the Boris Sagal Fellow in Directing forWilliamstown Theatre Festival, Staff Repertory Director for The Acting Company, and is an alumnus of the Directors Lab at Lincoln Center, a Usual Suspect at New York TheatreWorkshop, and a member of Ensemble Studio Theater. He has been a guest artist for The Juilliard School (5 seasons), The National Theatre Conservatory at The Denver Center, Purchase College Conservatory Training Program, TheAtlantic Theatre Company School, Bard College and Cornell University. Recent and upcoming projects include Great Expectations, starring Kathleen Chalfant as Miss Haversham, (The Lucille Lortel Theatre), A Hard Heart (again starring Ms. Chalfant) at TheHarold Clurman Theatre, and House of Blue Leaves (The Juilliard School).

Sarah Ruhl (Playwright, Passion Play) Sarah Ruhl's In The Next Room (or the vibratorplay) will appear on Broadway (Lincoln Center Theatre) this Fall 2009. Her plays includeThe Clean House (Susan Smith Blackburn Award, Pulitzer Prize finalist, PEN/PelsFoundation Award), Melancholy Play, Eurydice, Late: a cowboy song, Orlando, Demeterin the City (NAACP Image Award nomination), Passion Play (Fourth Forum FreedomAward from The Kennedy Center), and Dead Man's Cell Phone (Helen Hayes Award). Herplays have been performed at Lincoln Center Theater, Second Stage Theatre, PlaywrightsHorizons, Goodman Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, The WilmaTheater, Cornerstone Theater Company, Madison Repertory Theatre, Clubbed Thumb,and Piven Theatre Workshop, among other theaters across the country. Her plays have been translated into German, Polish, Korean, Russian, and Spanish, and have beenproduced internationally in London, Canada, Germany, Latvia, and Poland. Sarah isoriginally from Chicago and received her MFA from Brown University. She is the recipientof a Helen Merrill Award, Whiting Writers' Award, PEN/Pels Foundation Award, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. She is a proud member of New Dramatists and 13P and is an Associate Artist at Yale Rep.

MarK Wing-Davey (Director, Passion Play) first came to prominence in the United States with his highly acclaimed 1992 production of Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest (NewYork Theatre Workshop, Manhattan Theatre Club; OBIE Award, Outstanding Direction).He recently directed The Singing Forest at The Public Theatre, Passion Play at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and Yale Repertory Theatre, and the world premiere of UNCONDITIONAL for LAByrinth Theater Company. Additional US and internationalcredits include productions of new and classic plays at American Conservatory Theater,American Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Rep, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Mark TaperForum, McCarter Theatre, Milwaukee Rep, The Public Theater, Pittsburgh Public Theatre,Playmaker's Rep, Playwrights Horizons, Seattle Rep; London's Royal Court Theatre, RoyalNational Theatre, the Actors Center (where he served as Artistic Director from 1998-2002), and in the West End, the Edinburgh Festival, and Australia. Committing much of his career to developing new plays, he has directed new work by Naomi Iizuka, JoséRivera, Anna Deavere Smith, Tony Kushner, and Craig Lucas, among others. Mr. Wing-Davey is the new chair of the graduate acting program at Tisch School of the Arts at NewYork University.

Melissa Friedman (Director, Shakespeare Remix MacBeth) As an actor with Epic Off-Broadway: Praxis in A Hard Heart, Clara in Einstein's Gift, Hannah in Hannah andMartin, Little Eyolf, Habitat, Time & the Conways. As an actor with Epic Journeys: TheOresteia Project, Antigone-in-Progress, Enemy of the People, The Visit. As a director of Epic's Bridge productions: Romeo & Juliet: 2 Households, Othello: I am not what I am, Hamlet: Out of Joint, The Ghosts of Richard III, and Winter's Tale. Other Off-Broadway and regional credits include Degenerate Art and Much Ado About Nothing with IrondaleEnsemble Project; The Last Night of Ballyhoo at the Fulton Opera House; An Ideal Husband at Tennessee Rep; The Substance of Fire, Macbeth (with Victor Garber), Love's Labour's Lost (with Richard Easton), Henry IV (with John Goodman) at The Old GlobeTheatre. Film & TV: Santa Smokes, "Novel Reflections: The American Dream," (PBS). Melissa is a Lead Teaching Artist with Epic and program co-designer at Epic's partnerschools throughout the city and beyond; as well as the primary executive in charge ofEpic's education division. She has presented workshops at conferences on sequential artseducation and Epic's mission of developing "Citizen-Artists" throughout the Northeastincluding at the NYC Arts-in-Education Roundtable's Face-to-Face Conference, NYSCA's Empire State Partnership Summer Seminar, and Common Ground Conference inRochester. Melissa received her BA in Theatre from Oberlin and an MFA in Acting fromthe University of San Diego/Old Globe Theatre.

Epic Theater Ensemble, winner of OBIE, Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics, and OTTOAwards, was founded in 2001 by artists and activists dedicated to placing theatrical eventsat the center of public dialogue and building a diverse and multi-generational audience forsocially-minded theatre.

Epic's past productions include Nilaja Sun's No Child..., whichEpic commissioned, developed and premiered before its commercial transfer and nationaltour, as well as premieres of A More Perfect Union by Vern Thiessen (Epic Commission), Palace Of The End by Judith Thompson (Epic Commission, 2008 Susan Smith BlackburnPrize Winner), A Hard Heart by Howard Barker (featuring Kathleen Chalfant), Beauty onthe Vine by Zak Berkman (featuring Olivia Wilde), Hannah and Martin by Kate Fodor(featuring David Strathairn), Einstein's Gift by Vern Thiessen (featuring Aasif Mandvi and Shawn Elliott), Habitat by Judith Thompson and revivals of GB Shaw's Widowers' Houses(with Peter Jay Fernandez), Little Eyolf by Henrik Ibsen and Time and the Conways byJ.B. Priestley.

Epic's annual Sunshine Series Readings Festival shining light on new political playwriting has nurtured and presented work by numerous socially-mindedwriters including Leila Buck, Russell Davis, Bathsheba Doran, Marcus Gardley, WarrenLeight, Hannah Moscovitch, Jeanne Sakata, Nilaja Sun, Judy Tate, Vern Thiessen, JudithThompson, Daniel Voll, Patricia Wettig, and David Zellnik.

In June 2008, Epic's New PlayWing was in residence at The Orchard Project developing a number of projects includingLear de Bessonet/Todd Almond's OLIVER!Epic's first official day of operations was September 11, 2001. Rather than be deterred byworld events, Epic's Founders were galvanized to work even harder to create a companythat embraces theatre and theatre-artists as unique instruments for empowering diversevoices, fostering public dialogue, and inspiring social change. The artists who participate in Epic's Off-Broadway Season are also part of The company's nationally acclaimed arts-education residencies that are presented in public schools and community centers in New York, New Jersey, and New England.

Epic Theatre Ensemble is a Member of TheatreCommunications Group (TCG), the national organization for the American theatre, as wellas ART/NY.